All posts for the month June, 2011

I have been a destination expert for Istanbul on a very well known travel website ‘advising on trips’ worldwide and one which is supposed to be impartial and based on traveler experiences. My aim was, like in this blog, advice travelers on a side of Istanbul they cannot find on travel guide books that usually tend to concentrate on more tourist locations, and miss out on the real living heart of a city like Istanbul. But unfortunately I had to recently stop writing there as a principle. The main reason is the Istanbul forums lost their integrity and some of the so called experts are only there to market businesses they are associated with. I’m sure not all travel advice sites are like this but they are such powerful tools for people to decide on their very prescious holidays, it is no wonder stealth marketing has creeped into them. Anyway, I hope to update this blog much more frequently now as after 2 years of a kind of absence from the cool Istanbul scene (and 2 babies!) I am now back. And even hope to add to my blog cool Istanbul for cool kids!!! Writing this post from beautiful Turkbuku with the full moon rising and hoping to see the lunar eclipse later into the night. Please keep your questions coming, love the comments here and I try to answer each and every one.

Update (5/8/2011)
This was posted in Lonely Planet Thorntree forum yesterday, which is very relevant to the topic so I wanted to share it http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=2089606
Update (8/8/10)
Those of you who know me from the ‘Travel Advice’ website, I am no longer a member there as the moderators kicked me out for expressing doubts of the integrity of the DE they are protecting (refer to the comments below)

Update 28/10/2011
I knew it was not only me who thought travel advice websites are losing their credibility. I just saw a listing for a TV programme to be aired in Channel 4 in UK on Monday 31st October at 9pm called ‘Attack of the Trip Advisors’http://www.channel4.com/programmes/attack-of-the-trip-advisors
I’ll let you know what I think of it afterwards.